A Young Artist Empowered
Seeing my seven-year-old on the brink of tears while doing a math lesson didn’t exactly make me feel like the “super mom” my Facebook profile often shows. It was one of those moments that makes you wonder Am I really cut out for homeschooling?
After a few deep breaths and some encouraging words, I finally got her to tell me what was so upsetting about doing math problems. In the most honest and innocent way, she told me she really didn’t feel like doing math at that moment.
From there I had two choices: make her do it anyway or release her to do whatever activity was on her mind. I leaned toward the latter. We agreed to complete one more row of problems, and then my sweet child freely chose to go draw pictures of our family. Now on the inside, as her mom and teacher, I worried. I wondered when we would return to the lesson because if you skip lessons, you get “behind” in the curriculum, and that’s just the worst, right?
Not exactly.
Two things happened that day. Most importantly, my child felt secure knowing that her mom respects her feelings. And secondly, she learned that she can be trusted to know when she’s had enough of something. You may be wondering, What happens when kids take advantage of this?
In the past five years of using a student-led learning approach with my four children, I have very rarely seen that happen. It’s not because I have uniquely super-moral children. Nor is it due to a fine-tuned routine that causes them to “just know what to do.”
It’s because they get to enjoy a lifestyle of purposeful learning. You see, student-led learning is always purposeful. They learn exactly what they need to learn for pursuing activities that interest them, just like adults do.
Think about learning in adulthood. We seek out the things we enjoy learning about and put them into action. When we come to a gap in knowledge that forces us to stop working, we learn what we need to know and keep going. My husband and I once put together a cross-fit gym. We didn’t love learning about the weight loads of different types of screws, but the thought of our own garage gym was motivation!
Children operate the same way. My daughter has the heart of an artist and the mind of an engineer. She loves creating and building beautiful things. I can’t count the number of ah-ha moments she’s had when she discovered how the work she loves connects directly to math. As her teacher, I now have a tool I can use to motivate her. While we still have days when it takes some grit to get through a math lesson, I now incorporate art and building projects into fractions and multiplication.
By following her lead, I’ve given her the space to recognize math’s relevance to things that matter to her. No longer is math a “punishment.” It’s a resource she can use for the work that brings her joy.